Asian Handicap Middles -diverted-

**Ganchrow** · 10-28-07, 10:45 AM

Originally posted by 20Four7

Ganch, not to derail this thread but have you done anything regarding asian soccer handicaps. I do play some over 2 and 2 1/2 with an under 2 1/2 if I believe there is an edge to do so. Obviously your betting on the 2 here to push lose the 2 1/2 and cash the complete under.

Hmm. I can't say I see the advantage of doing this. Your net position here would be a middle on the 2 except that you'd be paying extra juice in that the ½ unit of the Asian on the over 2½ is fully canceled by half of the straight bet on the under 2½.

Another way to look at this, is that if you're betting the middle around the 2, you're ostensibly doing so because you believe that a total of 2 will bit more frequently than expected by the market. If that's the case then placing half a bet on the over 2½ doesn't appear to make much sense.

An alternative to the Asian middle would be a regular middle, the under 2½ along with any of the over 1½ the over 1¾, or the over 2. For no reason other than I happen to have the data handy, let's compare the Asian middle to the over 2/under 2½ middle.

I created a spreadsheet to calculate the vig and effective line for both the Asian and regular middles. Download Asian middle spreadsheet.

Take today's Liverpool @ Arsenal match:

These lines have been entered in the area on the top right of the spreadsheet.

The over/under 2½ market taken in conjunction with the over/under 2 market implies the following probabilities for the total:

<table><tr><td class=ganch> total < 2</td><td class=ganch>   </td><td class=ganch> 30.568% </td></tr> <tr><td class=ganch> total = 2</td> <td class=ganch>   </td> <td class=ganch> 24.206% </td> </tr> <tr> <td class=ganch> total ≥ 3 <td class=ganch>   </td> <td class=ganch> 45.226% </td> </tr> </table>

These probabilities are in the area on the top left of the spreadsheet.

What we see is that the vig as percentage of the at-risk quantity is considerably higher for the Asian middle than for the regular middle (28.77% Asian vs. 16.15% regular). Similarly the effective line is higher for the regular middle (+246) than for the Asian (+194).

The only area where the Asian middle is better is for vig as % of bet (2.36% Asian vs. 2.43% regular), but this is a fairly meaningless quantity for middles.

You'll notice that if you increase the "premium on the 2 point" (this corresponds to the added likelihood of landing on the 2), the amount by which the regular middle outperforms the Asian, increases as well (remember that negative vig is good).

If you're interested in the Kelly criterion as it applies to Asian handicapping check out this post.

Attached Files

Asian Middle.xls (52.0 KB, 1487 views)

**20Four7** · 10-28-07, 01:10 PM

Thanks Ganch.

I don't know where you find the time to work all this out, but I am grateful you do. You have mathematized some of what my general feel is.